Newbie needs tube amp tip

Very long , must have been a bad day no cycling ..

1. Lets start with solid state amps were all bright before 2005 , is this when you started hi end hifi ..? :)

Only bad SS sounded bright as you described and most back before 2005 were exclusively Japanese ..

No properly designed SS amp sounded like that even decades ago even in the 70’s , its why audiophiles could walk away from toobs mostly ..

Then as today most defective sounded SS amps can be traced to input drive , like Pre amp mis-match etc ..

A toob preamp is a very easy device to design and while not ultimately better than an SS version , on avg they tend to be better musically as an SS preamp is very very difficult to get right ...

Regards
 
For $3k (or a little more) you can get a version of the venerable McIntosh MC 275. I have one and it’s a great little amp. Plenty of power and very good bass and treble extension. Easy on tubes.

I prefer the push-pull tube amps myself. The SE triode amps are euphonic and pleasant for awhile until you hear their shortcomings.

With tube amps you are pretty much paying for iron. Big output transformers, well designed, will mostly determine the sound quality.
 
a.wayne said:
Very long , must have been a bad day no cycling ..

1. Lets start with solid state amps were all bright before 2005 , is this when you started hi end hifi ..? :)

Only bad SS sounded bright as you described and most back before 2005 were exclusively Japanese ..

No properly designed SS amp sounded like that even decades ago even in the 70’s , its why audiophiles could walk away from toobs mostly ..

Then as today most defective sounded SS amps can be traced to input drive , like Pre amp mis-match etc ..

A toob preamp is a very easy device to design and while not ultimately better than an SS version , on avg they tend to be better musically as an SS preamp is very very difficult to get right ...

Regards
Click to expand...
I started in hifi about 1977. I was tinkering with it when I was in 7th grade back in the 1960s and continued all through high school and college. Atma-Sphere was founded making triode OTLs in 1978.

Almost all solid state amps have distortion rising with frequency; that is an enormous reason they sound bright. The exception is if they are zero feedback. Many American and European solid state amps were made prior to 2005!

Not sure what is meant by 'defective' but if this meant brightness and harshness, its caused by distortion rising with frequency plus poor distortion spectra. Its nothing to do with a mismatch between amp and preamp and isn't caused by input drive (its caused by the output transistors being very hard to drive at high frequencies beyond the audio band. That in turn is caused by a high input capacitance in the devices).

Tube amps, because they use more linear devices, tend to use less feedback so they suffer less from the distortion rising with frequency thing and also tend to have better distortion spectra. Zero feedback amps have a ruler flat DvsF curve across the audio band which is an enormous reason people like SETs.

It is possible now to build a solid state amp that has feedback and also has a flat DvsF curve like an SET, also with a good distortion spectra. This is due to advances in semiconductor tech in the last 10-20 years. Once you get the spectra and DvsF things right, it allows for a solid state amp to be smooth in the mids and highs just like tubes.
 
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